Tobacco Regulations Aim To Curb Smoking by Teenagers

Educators and health professionals are applauding President
Clinton's efforts to curb teenage smoking by regulating the nicotine in
tobacco as a drug. But, they say, stopping teenagers from using tobacco
will require other efforts, too.

In an unprecedented act, Mr. Clinton said last month that he was
trying to protect young people from the "awful dangers of tobacco" by
authorizing the Food and Drug Administration to sharply restrict the
advertising, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to
teenagers. The rules would not affect advertising in materials aimed at
adults.

"Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are harmful, highly addictive, and
aggressively marketed to our young people," Mr. Clinton said in
announcing the proposal. "The evidence is overwhelming, and the threat
is immediate."

All 50 states and the District of Columbia ban the sale of tobacco
products to minors, but enforcement of those laws is often lax.

"This is a first step," said Dr. Richard Heyman, the chairman of the
American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on substance abuse. "It
certainly doesn't get the whole job done, but by looking at the access
issue, it takes a step. I think that's a start."

Misguided Rules?

Health professionals consider cigarette smoking to be the chief
preventable cause of premature death and disease in the United
States.

Each day, 3,000 young people become regular smokers, according to a
1994 report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences. And their rate of smoking appears to be increasing.

In a federally funded study released this summer, the University of
Michigan found that between 1991 and 1994 the rate of smoking among 8th
graders increased from 14.3 percent to 18.6 percent. (See Education
Week, Aug. 2, 1995.)

However, tobacco products are not likely to become less available to
young people anytime soon. The regulations are only proposals, and the
public has three months to submit comments.

In addition, tobacco companies and others have filed lawsuits in
federal court, launching what promise to be lengthy legal challenges to
the proposed regulations. The tobacco industry maintains that not only
does the fda not have the authority to regulate tobacco but that the
curbs on advertising violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free
speech.

Mark V. Tushnet, the associate dean for research at Georgetown
University Law Center in Washington, said the First Amendment arguments
are fairly weak because the Supreme Court has said Congress can
regulate commercial advertising. But, Mr. Tushnet said, whether the fda
has jurisdiction to regulate tobacco remains a question.

"There's a lot of legislative history and other statutes indicating
that Congress may not have wanted the fda to regulate tobacco," he
said.

The fda claims it has jurisdiction because of scientific evidence
showing that nicotine is addictive. Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco
products are "nicotine delivery devices" that can be regulated in the
same way that aspirin can.

Seeking a New Image

The idea, according to the fda's proposal, is not only to curb
access by banning vending-machine sales, for instance, but to
"significantly decrease the amount of positive imagery that makes these
products so appealing" to adolescents.

Federal officials plan to do that by limiting advertisements in
publications read by children to black and white text--cutting out
characters such as Joe Camel--and by banning billboards that advertise
tobacco products within 1,000 feet of a school or playground. In
addition, the 20 pages of proposed regulations published in the Aug. 11
Federal Register call for manufacturers of tobacco products to
establish and maintain a $150 million-a-year national public-education
campaign aimed at children and adolescents. (See box, this page.)

The FDA hopes such a campaign would counter "decades of pro-tobacco
messages" and reduce the use of tobacco by young people.

But an industry spokesman said that while tobacco companies back
efforts to enforce existing laws barring sales to minors, the proposed
advertising restrictions are misguided, illegal, and do not address the
reasons teenagers smoke.

"Peer pressure and family and sibling influence directly come to
bear on teenage experimentation with tobacco," said Thomas Lauria, a
spokesman for the Tobacco Institute in Washington.

"It has nothing to do with advertising," Mr. Lauria said, citing
University of Michigan data showing that between 1993 and 1994
marijuana use doubled among 8th graders surveyed. (See Education Week,
Jan. 11, 1995.)

"These kids are not seeing billboards for marijuana," he said.

Dr. Heyman of the AAP's substance-abuse committee said that even if
the regulations went into effect, tobacco products likely would
continue to be as accessible to teenagers as alcohol is now.

A comprehensive smoking-prevention program, he said, should raise
the price of cigarettes for the price-sensitive youth market and look
at how cigarette smoking is portrayed in movies.

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